A Story of Many Names
by Aliens of Doom
Summary: Born on Eden Prime, stolen when still just a baby. The one known first as Jennifer McCoy, then Subject Zero struggles through the horrors of the Teltin facility on Pragia. She has to deal not only with the ruthless treatment of the Cerberus guards, but also the hatred of her fellow test subjects. It's not an easy life to live, yet somehow she survives. Only just survives.


Eden Prime was the pinnacle of human achievement. It was humanity's very own pinprick of light amongst the stars. A pinprick, not a blazing sun, or a scorching lamp. Not even a candle, a match in the grand scheme of the cosmos. Eden Prime wasn't there to hold back the nothingness, but – rather – make it more beautiful through slight contrast. Eden Prime was the proof that humans weren't simply some backwater species who'd happened to stumble into the limelight. Humans were here to stay, Eden Prime said, and they'd do this whole "surviving" business of evolution on a level aliens never seen before.

Eden Prime's name came from the beautiful, magnificent, and (most importantly) habitable nature of the planet. It was humanity's new Garden. They had been given a second chance, and they were determined to make this one last.

Eden Prime was no heaven though. Just like in any Garden, sin and disease crept in eventually.

The sin came from the couple in the field amongst the blooming flowers, where they thought no one would see them. It came from the back room of the only bar where converted medi-gel injectors serve a different kind of pain dampener. Sin pervades the colony of Eden Prime. From the farm-hand telling his employer that the tractor was like that when he found it, to the judge's brother getting off on a technicality. Even heaven was not free of sin.

And from the sin came the disease. The disease flowed through the addicts' veins as it commanded them to keep looking. Just keep looking. And the disease could be found in the mind of the judge's brother, as he draws the knife through another man's throat. But (most relevantly) the disease was in the bottom of the bottle of asari liquor the courier captain decided to slip from his shipment. The disease then spread down past his lips into his throat, where it caught and caused the captain to cough and spasm his arms. And when the captain crashed onto the surface of Eden Prime, the disease flowed out of the cracked engine and down, to rest over the fields of blooming flowers. And it was in this field of blooming flowers that the eezo attached itself to the foetus that young Amber McCoy didn't even know she was carrying.

It would only be several more days before she knew about the child growing inside her, but it would be several months before the doctors told her of the strange nodules (they refused to use the term tumours) they were seeing in her child's brain. They told Amber McCoy that her child was unlikely to survive birth, and even if she did, there was little chance of her being mentally sound. Amber McCoy didn't listen to them. They didn't know her baby like she did. Her baby would be special. Her baby was going to change the universe, they'd see one day.

All this while, Amber McCoy was being watched. By those who passed her in the street, sure, those who said things behind her back, but those she knew about, and those she didn't mind. It was the ones she was unaware of, those that watched from the shadows, and behind sunglasses that Amber McCoy should have worried about, except for the fact that they were invisible to her. Even as they sat, taking notes, at tables in the bar as she passed, she didn't notice. To Amber McCoy, the world was wonderful. Eden Prime was the perfect place for her. And slowly, the doctors came around.

As the baby cam closer and close to term, Amber McCoy could see that the doctors were becoming more excited, too. They _had_ finally understood what she had been saying all along. The doctors came to her one day, sat her down, said that there was a chance (a chance, they emphasized) that her little baby would become what some people were calling "biotics." Amber McCoy didn't know exactly what that meant, and she didn't particularly care. It meant that her baby would be different from everyone else, and that was a good thing (a very good thing, in fact) in Amber McCoy's eyes.

Amber McCoy gave birth on June 24, 2161 at 13:03 (GMT) to a baby girl. Jennifer, was her name (though that would change many times over the course of her life). And, just as Amber McCoy hadn't known of the sin or the disease that led to Jennifer being born the way she was ("nodules" and all), she didn't know of all the sin and disease that was to come in young Jennifer's life.

The first disease that Jennifer encountered was that of the doctors sent to check-up on her and her "condition." The doctors that poked and prodded. The doctors who never gave lollipops or stickers.

The disease that crawled in the doctors' heads wasn't one fueled by the drugs or the alcohol that seemed oh so common on Eden Prime, but rather by greed and blind obedience to their cause. They were the ones who'd so eagerly watched young Amber McCoy, and now they had turned their attention to her daughter.

And so it was that on June 25, 2164, when Amber McCoy took her young daughter in for a look-over (the last of the monthly visits before they moved to semi-annual), she was told that she couldn't go into the room with her daughter. She was told, just over thirty minutes later, just at the point when she was ready to barge in, regardless of what the doctor had said, that Jennifer had died from a sudden complication regarding her tumours.

Amber McCoy was told "No." She could not see her daughter's body. It was unlike anything they'd ever seen before, and they would have to be keeping her for study. The doctors packed their bags and put their sensors back into black briefcases, not needing them any more, now that their test subject was gone.

The doctors referred Amber McCoy to to a extranet support group, tipped their hats, and left her crying in what used to be their lobby. The disease that had wormed its way into the hearts and minds of Jennifer McCoy's doctors caused them to commit this sin. For as their spaceship slowly left the atmosphere of Eden Prime, the small cry of a toddler could be heard, "Mommy? Mommy, where are you?" And, after not too long, the words became tears as Jennifer McCoy called and called for her mother, a mother never known again. So it was that Jennifer McCoy, who was no longer a person, but a subject, was introduced to her life of sin and disease.

Subject Zero of the Teltin facility would live the rest of her life surrounded by sin and disease, often the recipient, even more often the perpetrator, but always part of the cycle. And for her there was no pinprick in the nothingness. For her there wasn't even the lie of heaven to keep her sedated in the back room of the bar. Only the feeling of the knife drawing through her neck, and the taste of good asari liquor trailing down her throat.

Born of disease and sin, and born into sin and disease, Jennifer McCoy would become Subject Zero, who would become Jacqueline Nought, who would become simply Jack, with a million names in between. This is her story. A story of many names, many diseases, and many, many sins.

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Author's Notes: So this is my first attempt at any serious, long-term projections fan-fiction, and thus I'll be relying upon all of you to help it be not horrible. As for where this story is going, I'm planning on taking it up through at least Jack's escape from the Pragia facility, but I might end up going further than that, recounting some of her adventures afterwards, maybe even bringing us into Mass Effect 2, we'll see. For now I simply add that I hope you enjoy what I have so far, and that you, if at all possible, drop a review to help make it even better.


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